Marxist filmmakers, Marxist-influenced culture and Marxist theory, have a huge influence on world film culture. Film developed in the context of urbanisation, industrialisation, and mass culture. Film can speak to audience as a class in respectable cultural forms, where the middle-class values are guaranteed. Much of the most important culture and politics came from the so-called Third World’s anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles and its interaction with western political aspirations. The “bourgeois” cultural theories are so important for Marxist film theory.

    The famous sentence of the famous British writer H. D. Lawrence for America is right at the beginning of the movie: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” Hostiles is a revisionist western in the late 1800s that deals with the relationship between whites and Indians. The film takes place in New Mexico in 1892, when the last indigenous tribes that resisted the deportation policies, which envisaged the expulsion of the natives from their lands and settling in “reservations” resembling concentration camps, were also defeated and the conflicts began to cease. Defeating Indian resistance, the federal government has declared victory, and decides in a show of magnanimity to honor the wish of the dying Cheyenne chief, Yellow Hawk, to be buried on his ancestral homeland in Montana after seven years in captivity. The task of accompanying Yellow Hawk and his family on this difficult journey is given to his incurable enemy of the Indians, cavalry captain Joseph Blocker. Hostiles begin to question who is more savage through this fictional story that juxtaposes an Indian chief and a US cavalryman. The protagonist of the film, Captain Blocker, is like the embodiment of the American spirit that Lawrence describes. So much so that the Indians killed by Blocker have no limits. The Indian murderer Blocker is cultured enough to read the writings of Julius Caesar in Latin, and is too religious to drop the Bible. We understand how kind-hearted our reticent hero, whose stern facial expression we rarely see softens, is from the kindness he showed to Rosalie, whose husband and children were murdered by the Comanches. In keeping with Hollywood clichés, Rosalie cannot help but be drawn to the irresistible charm of this charismatic US cavalry. We see that Blocker, who could not accept the task of accompanying an Indian chief, whom he blamed for the death of his comrades, at first, underwent a radical transformation during the journey and was purged of the hatred he had for the Yellow Hawk and all the Indians in his person. In fact, we witness that he not only did this, but also took a deep conscience and regretted the massacres he committed in the past. “A part of me dies with you,” Blocker tells the old Indian. It is hard to fathom how Blocker suddenly formed such a deep, emotional bond with his mortal enemy, whom he had not been able to take his eyes off of for a moment, and whom he had not been able to trust at all. Because there is nothing to explain this change in Blocker’s view of Yellow Hawk, except that they fight together against the Comanches who attacked their caravans. We cannot explain this change as Blocker had the opportunity to get to know Yellow Hawk closely during the trip, because we do not even see Yellow Hawk having a good conversation with Blocker during the movie, which lasts for more than two hours. The Indians in Hostiles do not give the impression of characters with inner worlds, feelings at all. As a matter of fact, in the film’s universe, not only speaking, but also having strong emotions such as pain and anger is a privilege unique to whites. Despite Blocker’s initial hostility, Yellow Hawk’s demeanor has no trace of hostility, hatred, or anger. It is hard to believe that this good-natured Indian, who does little more than sit quietly and stare into the distance, was once a warrior who instilled fear in the whites. Not only Yellow Hawk, but also his son and daughter-in-law, they show that they do not hold grudges against the whites who imprisoned, massacred and displaced their people, proving at every opportunity that they are their loyal friend and ally. In short, we are faced with the stereotype of the good Indian collaborating with the whites and fighting side by side against the bad Indians. The “bad” Indians, who refuse to bow to the whites and bury their battle axes, are inevitably dehumanized, like the Comanches who murdered Rosalie’s family. Screaming like wild beasts, the Comanches are a bloodthirsty, inhuman horde that brutally kills anyone who gets in their way. Oddly enough, this view is expressed not by a white racist, but by Yellow Hawk himself. Just as there are bad Indians in the Hostiles, there are also bad whites like racist white landlords, so the film sends the message that whites do not lag behind the Indians in brutality. Thus, the film reduces the source of the conflicts between whites and Indians caused by the American expansionism in the continent to “wildness”, that is, to the universal, abstract human nature disconnected from material conditions. Therefore, the genocide and deportation policies followed by the US government in the 19th century, which inspired Adolf Hitler, and the resistance of the Indians who defended their right to life against these policies are put in the same category. Emphasizing mutual understanding and tolerance, Blocker’s words such as “both sides have suffered great losses, now it is time to shake hands and make peace” only serve to cover up the indigenous genocide. That being the case, it is only natural that Blocker would advise Yellow Hawk not to look back. In the end, an ethnically mixed family emerges when the white woman whose husband and children were killed by the Indians and the indigenous child whose mother and father were killed by the racist whites side by side.

    The film ends with a “happy ending” implying that the orphaned Yellow Hawk’s granddaughter will grow up alongside Rosalie and Blocker by reading Julius Caesar, with a finale proclaiming that the native child will be assimilated into the culture of white Americans. Thus, the film reinforces the ideology of the melting pot, which envisages the melting of all differences in the same pot and merging into a common American identity. Surely, the Indians lost in this melting pot will have their own culture. After all, Hostiles is a western that is shot from the point of view of whites, that under its revisionist appearance, serves to reinforce the official ideologies of America, and reproduces the familiar good Indian-bad Indian opposition. While the insatiable greed of human beings and the instinct to be the absolute owner of the land they live in are emphasized in this movie, “Why are we killing each other?” this question is taken as the main theme. There are many Marxist elements in the film. We see the strong and the rich ones oppressing the weak and poor ones. Race does not really matter at this point. Powerful Native Americans can torment, powerful white Americans can also torment. As we see in the movie, the rich and powerful people throw the weaker and poorer people off their land. In this way, people assimilate, lose their own culture and identity. People in this situation are always forced to adapt, obey the strong. With the industrialization period, capitalism also increases. New products are produced and these factories, companies have an owner. The people working in these workplaces are also in the working class. There is always a distinction between the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor. We can see these distinctions in the movie. If I mention about the train in the last scene and the characters getting on the train and being included in the train; this scene reflects the development of capitalism along with the development of industry and the fact that these people had to be included in the existing capitalist system.